7 Best UI Frameworks for ReactJS in 2022

In 2022, ReactJS emerged as the frontend development library that developers will use the most frequently for reactjs development services. ReactJS is the most favoured library amongst developers, followed by well-known frameworks like jQuery, Angular, or Vue.js by a significant margin, according to a recent Stackoverflow study. ReactJS’s prominence may be easily explained. The library was designed with aspects like user-friendliness and the ability for programs to respond quickly in mind. Combined, these characteristics provide us the ability to create UIs that are incredibly immersive in a comparably short amount of time.

Reusable component support is one of ReactJS’s most advantageous features in this regard. A set of reusable component libraries make up the ReactJS library. React component libraries make up each UI framework we take into consideration here. The fundamental units of a React app comprise components. Our apps may be divided up into smaller, independent components using React so that we can edit and reuse these. When creating the user interfaces for our apps, we may use UI frameworks, which are collections of these components.

ReactJS is renowned for being inclusive as well. Due to its prominence, the library is rather large. ReactJS has continually improved with new APIs and frameworks thanks to its open-source nature, which also increases its usefulness. We’ll talk about the best 7 UI frameworks for ReactJS in this article. Here, the UI frameworks are sorted and chosen based on their Github vote totals.

UI Frameworks At a Glance 

A user interface (UI) framework is, to put it simply, a group of APIs that assist us in creating user interfaces (UIs) for our applications. The main focus of the development of applications is UI. Consequently, having a large selection of UI frameworks in frontend libraries is crucial. ReactJS offers compatibility for many other UI frameworks, giving us freedom when creating unique UIs for ReactJS apps. For maximum versatility and application efficiency, we may add reusable components from UI frameworks into our ReactJS applications.

Selecting the best UI Frameworks is indeed a difficult undertaking. Each framework has advantages and disadvantages of its own. More crucially, only when we have a certain type of application in mind can we compare UI frameworks more effectively. This is so because various applications require various UIs. In addition, multiple UI frameworks might be stated to function well for specific UIs. For example, a UI framework that helps develop an e-commerce application might not be as effective for developing an OTT app.

On a more basic level, though, we are going to talk about the top UI frameworks for ReactJS. I chose to use the frameworks that received the most GitHub votes. This makes sure that the UI frameworks we discuss in this blog are the ones that front-end developers use and appreciate the most. These frameworks outperform other UI frameworks in terms of versatility and usefulness.

Why are UI Frameworks necessary?

The center of an application’s front end is its user interface. Apps are used nowadays for a wide range of purposes. As a consequence, they frequently have many different parts and are hence complicated. The use of reusable components provided by ReactJS greatly simplifies the work. A component may be created by anybody in the world once, and developers can use that component in their UI anywhere on the globe. This helps us save time and money. Because UI frameworks are bundles of components, creating UIs is considerably easier. We may completely design our UIs by just dragging the components we require into our code. We are also given excellent optimization capabilities.

Ant UI

ReactJS’s Ant Design UI framework is a well-liked tool for creating commercial apps. It now holds the title of being ReactJS’s most popular UI framework with 81.5 K GitHub votes. Though Ant Design has surpassed MUI in terms of GitHub votes, MUI is still undoubtedly the most well-liked UI framework. Ant design incorporates less.js to style its components, which gives us some latitude in terms of UI customization. Similar to MUI, Ant Design offers a huge selection of prebuilt components and examples that enable us to create complex and dynamic UIs much more quickly.

Installation

npm

npm install antd

yarn

yarn add antd

Usage

To create a simple button in Ant Design: 

import { Button, DatePicker } from 'antd';

const App = () => (
  <>
    <Button type="primary">PRESS ME</Button>
    <DatePicker placeholder="select date" />
  </>
);
import 'antd/dist/antd.css'; // or 'antd/dist/antd.less'

Advantages

The following are the main advantages of employing Ant Design:

  • Support for several foreign languages is integrated
  • Premium parts for enterprise-level web apps
  • A comprehensive selection of prefabricated parts
  • Customizable themes with ease

Material UI

One of the most well-known UI frameworks for ReactJS is Material UI, popularly known as MUI. Currently, it has 80.5 K GitHub votes. The reason MUI is so well-liked is that it includes essential elements for UI creation. Material UI, Joy UI, Material Base, and MUI System make up the majority of MUI. While Material Basis includes unstyled base components for flexible customization, Joy UI has many already stylistic components. While offering a variety of CSS utilities, the Material System enables quick custom designs.

MUI is one of the most advanced frameworks for UI design in ReactJS since it is based on Google’s Material Design. Sophisticated user interfaces with prebuilt styles and color schemes may be created with simplicity.

Installation

MUI

npm

npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

yarn

yarn add @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

MUI Base

npm

npm install @mui/base

yarn

yarn add @mui/base

MUI System

npm

npm install @mui/system @emotion/react @emotion/styled

yarn

yarn add @mui/system @emotion/react @emotion/styled

Usage

Here is an example of MUI usage for a simple button component: 

import * as React from 'react';
import Button from '@mui/material/Button';

function App() {
  return <Button variant="contained">Hello Learner</Button>;
}

Advantages

The following are the main benefits of choosing MUI:

  • Google Material Design-powered prebuilt immersive user interface designs
  • Advanced thematic capabilities
  • Rapid MVP creation
  • Adaptable personalization with CSS Utilities

React Storybook

The framework was initially released in 2016 with React Storybook, and since then, it has become quite popular. On GitHub, Storybook now has 73.4 thousand votes. React Storybook is an innovative concept. This is a UI development environment rather than a UI framework like the others in this category.

React Storybook serves as a blank canvas for UI design. It gives us a closed environment in which to create unique components that function separately from other elements of the environment. This opens the door for innovation and exploration. The adoption of Storybook among ReactJS frameworks has reached an all-time high because of this feature exclusively. The process of creating distinct components speeds up development and improves the code’s quality. If you’re searching for a framework that allows you to retrieve rapid, prebuilt programs, this might not be the one for you. However, because it allows for experimentation and learning with individual components, Story is more beginner-friendly.

Installation

cd my-react-app
npx sb init

Usage

A simple demo button can be created in Storybook as follows

// Inside src/components/Button/Button.js

import React from 'react';

const Button = ({ children, ...rest }) => {
  return (
    <button className="button" {...rest}>
      { children }
    </button>
  )
}

export default Button;

Advantages

Storybook is advantageous for many reasons:

  • An isolated setting for construction materials
  • Creating and enhancing distinct elements
  • You may deploy the entire Storybook as a static application.
  • Reloading hot module

Semantic UI

Modern UI components with a high level of responsiveness are common in React Semantic UI. Semantic UI often ranks among the top 5 ReactJS UI frameworks of all time, with GitHub votes as high as 50,000. Semantic React UI is extremely well-liked because of its developer-friendly HTML designs. Semantic UI’s prebuilt layouts are constructed in HTML and heavily include its semantic design. For instance, every CSS class in the Semantic UI framework has a purpose. The usage of this framework is significantly simpler for developers since it views classes and words as being convertible. This is made possible by classes in Semantic UI using nouns and other natural language features to logically connect syntax to concepts. Natural language expressions are also used.

Installation

npm

npm install semantic-ui

yarn

yarn add semantic-ui-react

Usage

To create a simple form component with two input windows and one button using Semantic UI: 

import React from "react";
import { Button, Form, Input } from "semantic-ui-react";
import "semantic-ui-css/semantic.min.css";

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <Form>
        <Form.Field>
          <label htmlFor="name">Name</label>
          <Input name="name" />
        </Form.Field>
        <Form.Field>
          <label htmlFor="email">Email</label>
          <Input name="email" />
        </Form.Field>
        <Button primary>Submit</Button>
      </Form>
    );
  }
}

Advantages

Semantic UI’s primary advantages include:

  • Javascript is used by intuitive semantic UI components.
  • It supports Flexbox.
  • Flexible adaptations are made possible by the wide range of components.
  • Its comprehensive documentation makes it easier to use.

Chakra UI

Chakra UI is a flexible UI framework for ReactJS that was created especially to function with React apps for the web and mobile. The framework is well-liked for its utility components and presently has more than 28,2 thousand votes on Github. For instance, Chakra UI has a built-in component that enables your React application UIs to have dark mode and bright mode displays, a function that is currently very well-liked by users. This capability, which has become a must for apps, is one of the main reasons why Chakra UI is so well-known. The framework is quite versatile and broad overall.

Installation

npm

npm install --save @chakra-ui/react

yarn

yarn add @chakra-ui/react

Usage

To enable the dark mode theme to your components: 

import { ThemeProvider, ColorModeProvider } from "@chakra-ui/react"

const App = ({ children }) => (
  <ThemeProvider>
    <ColorModeProvider>{children}</ColorModeProvider>
  </ThemeProvider>
)
import { Button } from "@chakra-ui/react"
const App = () => <Button>Hello Learner</Button>

Advantages

The following are some of Chakra UI’s most prominent advantages:

  • Chakra UI’s components are all compatible with dark mode.
  • It is simple to use because of its thorough instructions.
  • Components are extremely accessible since they are based on WAI-ARIA criteria.
  • Charka UI has limitless composability because it was developed on React UI Primitive.

React Redux

A simple UI framework called React Redux is well-liked for its predictability. The framework offers a simple user interface where you may enter values for components, and they will be changed globally immediately. Due to the UI framework’s increased usability and streamlined design, it has received over 22,000 votes on Github. Furthermore, React Redux is renowned for having very helpful debugging capabilities. Redux’s built-in DevTools system automatically detects and tracks changes to the state of your application and gives error messages. Additionally, it does automated performance optimization, improving your React apps’ responsiveness.

Installation

npm

npm install react-redux

yarn

 yarn add react-redux

Usage

// /src/index.js

import React from 'react'
import { render } from 'react-dom'
import { Provider } from 'react-redux'
import { createStore } from 'redux';
import reducer from '../src/reducer/index'
import App from '../src/App'
import './index.css';

const store = createStore(
   reducer,
   window.__REDUX_DEVTOOLS_EXTENSION__ && 
   window.__REDUX_DEVTOOLS_EXTENSION__()
)
render(
   <Provider store = {store}>
      <App />
   </Provider>, document.getElementById('root')
)

Advantages

React Redux’s main advantages are:

  • Predictability and simplicity
  • DevTools’ automatic debugging
  • Automatic performance enhancement
  • Very responsive

React Bootstrap

As the name implies, React Bootstrap is a UI framework that blends React with Bootstrap. It is among the most well-liked CSS-based UI frameworks in ReactJS with approximately 21 K votes on GitHub. React Bootstrap is one of the most powerful UI frameworks for ReactJS because it combines Bootstrap core compatibility with React ecosystem compatibility. As long as React Bootstrap has its Bootstrap core, developers may use any of the tens of hundreds of Bootstrap themes to customize the user interface of their React applications.

Installation

npm

npm i react-bootstrap

yarn

yarn add react-bootstrap

Usage

import React from 'react';
import logo from '../logo.svg';

import {
  Container, Row, Col, Form, Input, Button, Navbar, Nav,
  NavbarBrand, NavLink, NavItem, UncontrolledDropdown,
  DropdownToggle, DropdownMenu, DropdownItem
} from 'reactstrap';

const AVATAR = 'https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/429e504af19fc3e1cfa5c4326ef3394c?s=240&d=mm&r=pg';

const Header = () => (
  <header>
    <Navbar fixed="top" color="light" light expand="xs" className="border-bottom border-gray bg-white" style={{ height: 80 }}>
    
      <Container>
        <Row noGutters className="position-relative w-100 align-items-center">
        
          <Col className="d-none d-lg-flex justify-content-start">
            <Nav className="mrx-auto" navbar>
            
              <NavItem className="d-flex align-items-center">
                <NavLink className="font-weight-bold" href="/">
                  <img src={AVATAR} alt="avatar" className="img-fluid rounded-circle" style={{ width: 36 }} />
                </NavLink>
              </NavItem>
              
              <NavItem className="d-flex align-items-center">
                <NavLink className="font-weight-bold" href="/">Home</NavLink>
              </NavItem>
              
              <NavItem className="d-flex align-items-center">
                <NavLink className="font-weight-bold" href="/">Electronics</NavLink>
              </NavItem>
              
              <UncontrolledDropdown className="d-flex align-items-center" nav inNavbar>
                <DropdownToggle className="font-weight-bold" nav caret>fashion</DropdownToggle>
                <DropdownMenu right>
                  <DropdownItem className="font-weight-bold text-secondary text-uppercase" header disabled>Learn React</DropdownItem>
                  <DropdownItem divider />
                  <DropdownItem>Men</DropdownItem>
                  <DropdownItem>Women</DropdownItem>
                  <DropdownItem>Baby and Kids</DropdownItem>
                </DropdownMenu>
              </UncontrolledDropdown>
              
            </Nav>
          </Col>
          
          <Col className="d-flex justify-content-xs-start justify-content-lg-center">
            <NavbarBrand className="d-inline-block p-0" href="/" style={{ width: 80 }}>
              <img src={logo} alt="logo" className="position-relative img-fluid" />
            </NavbarBrand>
          </Col>
          
          <Col className="d-none d-lg-flex justify-content-end">
            <Form inline>
              <Input type="search" className="mr-3" placeholder="Search React Courses" />
              <Button type="submit" color="info" outline>Search</Button>
            </Form>
          </Col>
          
        </Row>
      </Container>
      
    </Navbar>
  </header>
);

export default Header;

Advantages

React Bootstrap’s key advantages are:

  • You may use React Bootstrap as a prop API.
  • extremely accessible
  • accepts CSS
  • very adaptable

Summary

To add a broad range of components to our React projects without having to write the scripts for each one, we may use React UI frameworks, which are collections of components and hooks. We can create app MVPs a lot more quickly thanks to this, which frees up more time for customization. UI frameworks are made up of prebuilt elements that, depending on the framework you use, can be customized to varying degrees themselves. Choosing the best UI framework for your app can be challenging because ReactJS has hundreds of them.

We may infer from this blog that there isn’t a top UI framework for ReactJS. Each framework has benefits and drawbacks. For instance, MUI could be a robust and adaptable framework but it is not user-friendly for beginners. In contrast, Semantic UI is very user-friendly for beginners because of its straightforward design and thorough documentation. Different UI frameworks have various collections of components that are appropriate for various requirements. For instance, Chakra UI is more widely utilized for mobile applications whereas Ant Design is best suited for online applications. It would be a good idea for you to consider your alternatives as a frontend developer and pick the best framework for your React project.

Here, we examined the top 7 ReactJS UI frameworks according to GitHub voting. Although GitHub votes do not guarantee that a framework is appropriate for your project, they do offer us a sense of which frameworks developers are most likely to utilize.

Guest post by Neha Sharma